This just in, via an e-mail from the Impact Fund — renowned environmental justice activist Luke Cole of San Francisco has died in a car accident while abroad:

We have lost a champion for justice. Our dear friend and Board member, Luke Cole, was killed in a car accident while on a sabbatical in western Uganda on June 5. Details of the accident are sketchy, and we are keeping our fingers crossed for his surviving wife Nancy Shelby who was injured to an unknown degree.

Luke was one of the founders of the environmental justice movement, and the Executive Director of the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment. No date has yet been set for a memorial.

Per the CRPE’s Web site, Cole has represented community groups across the nation in their struggles for environmental justice, and taught seminars at the University of California, Berkeley; Stanford University; and UC-Hastings Law School.